


Patience in Winter

by pelicandaughter



Category: Fitz and the Fool Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb, fool's assassin
Genre: Gen, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28469016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelicandaughter/pseuds/pelicandaughter
Summary: This is meant to be a wholesome/wistful post for electropeach.AU where Patience lived to meet Bee. This is Bee at age 7, prior to freeing her tongue. I haven't written anything creative since 2007, so I'm rather rusty. Happy new year and Winterfest!Oh, I'm lairn on tumblr.
Relationships: Bee Farseer & FitzChivalry Farseer, Bee Farseer & Molly Chandler, Molly Chandler/FitzChivalry Farseer, Patience Farseer & Bee Farseer
Comments: 16
Kudos: 15
Collections: Winterfest - Rote Gift Exchange☆





	Patience in Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electropeach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electropeach/gifts).



Withywoods could be a difficult and lonely place for a tiny, unusual child, and in my seventh year I found Winterfest was no exception. Before, I was so small and so precious, my mother would keep me close. Maybe one or two members of the local gentry would share a meal with us before departing for grander festivities. Now, my Winterfest was in disarray. A woman like a windstorm had swept in to our tranquil manor the month before and demanded we replace our winter gloom with a party unmatched in gaiety. This storm titled herself Lady Patience and she was the former matron of Withywoods. She was a good friend to my mother and father and at times, I thought she must be my father's relative, as she spoke of “my Tom” with such affection.

Regardless, Patience was clearly a beloved part of the family, and as much as I tried to begrudge her disruption of my life I found her charms irresistible. She and my mother reassured me as the party drew closer. Patience wanted the hall filled with light to banish the winter dark. I was flattered with the task of choosing among my mother's candles for the finest scents to fill the hall. Patience wanted each dancer to wear a headpiece supporting one candle, but my mother and father won that debate on the grounds that a burning manor would invite more gloom than joy. When my mother presented me with the fine green tunic and yellow leggings I would wear to dance, my trepidation began to ease.

As the month of waiting ended, I was as eager for Winterfest as Patience, but my strangeness betrayed me again. Our home filled with unfamiliar guests and noise. Separate bands of minstrels tuned their instruments and the chaos was jarring. When one group struck the opening chords of a lively song, I watched the dancers pour onto the floor like water filling a basin. I loved my mother's glowing face as my father lifted her high above the other dancers, but I could never join them. They would leap suddenly to the forefront, but just as quickly be swallowed in whirling fabric and fast-stomping feet. My father promised me the second dance, but his touch was an agony I was eager to avoid. I was too small, too quiet, too disdained for companionship, so I sat in silence against a wall trying to disappear into shadows. 

Of course Patience's forest of candles foiled my efforts to hide, and the woman herself sat next to me. “Will you dance with this old woman? I think I could take at least one turn before collapsing.” I shook my head, wishing to disappear. “You're as sulky as Tom. Come, find your mother's exuberance with me instead. One dance?” 

I tried. Patience took my hands in hers and spun us slowly in our place along the wall. The dance was quick-paced and we were completely incongruous in our sedate drift. Two of the serving girls, Elm and Lea, rushed by with armfuls of fresh candles, but paused long enough to jeer from behind Patience's back. Red-faced with shame I stood still and looked down at the floor. Patience gently lifted my chin. Her face was kind, but in her eyes I could see echoes of her own pain. Perhaps she too was the oddity at celebrations. “Come little Bee, take me somewhere quiet. These aching joints can only dance so long.”

Patience allowed me to guide her to the Sparrow Chamber and promptly plopped into my mother's chair by the fire. She groaned. “Be happy you're slow to grow, child. You never want to become as old as me.” I ignored the strange threat to my life and brought her a footstool. With a relieved sigh, she removed her slippers and began to rub her ankles. Something was hidden beneath her hands.

“Bee, are you looking at my tattoo? It goes all the way up my calf!” With no further hesitation she lifted her skirts to reveal a garland of flowers, intricate and delicate. “This was my first try at tattooing. See here –” She rotated her calf to a spot below the back of her knee. “I went too deep and now there's a scar. Later I gave a few soldiers at Buckkeep colorful ones and they all said I had a fair hand.” I stared at the flowers avidly. The black ink seemed to glow with its true colors; purple, white, and yellow glistened bright. Dream haze blurred my eyes, but I still ran to my father's desk and scrabbled up his chair. Waving my journal at Patience, I dropped down at her feet and opened to the page of winter pansies.

“Oh you like pansies too? I - is this Tom's work? It looks just like my tattoo. His memory was always sharp.” She lifted her head, preparing for a misty eyed tangent. My garbled cry of frustration brought her back to me. Another clamber up to my father's desk and I had my tools prepared. A little gesturing with the pen and - “Oh! You drew them? They're beautiful, Bee. I'm sorry to force the pantomime, but my old ears do not always catch your words. Promise me you'll never grow old, child.” Even in the grip of a foretelling coming to fruition, I was not immune to her ominous references to mortality. Flustered, I paused for a breath, and with less urgency showed her the second drawing on the page. It was a circlet of holly, much like the one my mother wore in the hall below. Executing a series of pointed stares, I gestured to Patience's leg and then the drawing, then to the holly and my own leg.

“You want a tattoo? Well that is not happening on my watch! Tom was older than you when he begged for one, and you will notice he is tattoo-free. Well. I hope he is. I have not checked. Come back to me when you are seventeen.” My devastation must have shown in my wobbling mouth and teary eyes because Patience quickly added, “Now there's no need for that! We can do something more short-term for you. It's a shame there's no genip fruit in the hothouse or we could give you black to match mine. But maybe it would look too stark on your skin? You are a pale little thing. Perhaps brown is better after all.” 

Was she going to smear dirt on me? Quill ink? She gave me little time to wonder as she ordered me to fetch one of her bags. “The brown leather one with the clasp and the red ribbon on the handle.” She did not warn me how heavy the bag was. My hair was sweated to my head halfway back from my journey to her chambers when Revel stopped me. “Mistress Bee, may I be of assistance?” I nodded gratefully and allowed him to carry the clanking mass back to the Sparrow Chamber. He gave Patience an odd look as she nattered about a fox tattoo she designed for the Queen's Guard, but then he slipped away.

Patience pulled out a jar filled with a brown paste from the leather bag. “Hmm, it's thickened. No surprise. We'll need some alcohol to -” I raced from the room before she could finish. Pilfering a couple bottles from the kitchen was no challenge with Cook Nutmeg caught up in the Winterfest feast. I brought them back, proud to complete the second leg of my quest. 

Patience whistled. “You're a speedy one. Let me see what you brought.” She sniffed the first bottle. “Apricot. I think your father will want to keep this one.” The second bottle met her standards, so she thinned the paste and dipped in a brush. 

“You're lucky, this won't hurt like my tattoo did. Sit up here with me and we'll get started.” The process was slow, but I could see the shape of holly leaves forming around my ankle. As the fire crackled we sat in the golden light. Each stroke of the brush brought me closer to a future I had dreamed. Consumed by our project, neither of us immediately noticed my mother and father at the door.

“Eda's hands! Are you giving her a tattoo?” My father demanded in panicked voice. We both jumped and Patience smeared the paste. “Hush Tom, you'll spoil the pattern. And no, of course not.” Patience clucked at his worry as she wiped the spoiled portion of the dye from my leg. 

“Then what are you doing?” My mother demanded. “Revel was worried you were marking her chest with a giant fox.”

Patience snorted. “It's just a dye that will last a week or two. Nothing to worry about. Perfectly safe. I'll give you one next while we wait for Bee's to dry.” My father's tightened shoulders went slack and he dropped down to our eye-level. “You cannot say our worries were unfounded given your history, but I trust you to know your dyes. Bee, are you having fun?” I looked away from his piercing eyes, but managed to nod. My mother rested her hand on his shoulder. “My love, will you let Nettle know where we are? I do no want to leave her with all the hosting duties.” To my relief, he stood and turned away. Something passed between my father and Nettle, but I did not want to know it. Instead I studied my growing holly crown. It matched my mother's so well. “Queen and princess of Winterfest,” I thought dreamily.

“She says she has things in hand. Riddle and Revel are helping her.” My father informed us. “Well!” Patience exclaimed. “Let us all nestle into this cozy room and you can each have a turn as canvas for my craft.” And so we did. I felt the dazed fulfillment of a prediction as I sat in my mother's lap on the floor. Patience marked her shoulder with a single holly leaf and berry. My mother rested her hand on my head and murmured an old song from her childhood as I muzzily nodded along. My father sat at his desk, apart, but with us. Patience offered to draw him a wolf's silhouette, but at his insistence he received holly on his wrist to match us. We sat, half asleep in the warm and safe room of my childhood letting our dye dry and the fire turn to embers. The Sparrow Chamber was our island in a wider unknown world and I would hold tight to that evening through nightmares and hardships. In moments of despair I can remember the cool dye tingling my skin as it dried, and find my family again in the image of a holly crown.

**Author's Note:**

> I did a bunch of reading about traditional stick and poke tattoo methods and then realized Patience giving a seven-year-old a tattoo out of the blue was not gonna work. Oh well! The dye used instead is not meant to be an exact replica of henna. Just similar.


End file.
